8 September 2013

Expat Embarrassments

One
of the main character traits all expats need is a sense of humour about the situations you find yourself in.
Life has a way of letting us all make fools of ourselves from time to
time and these opportunities are only ever magnified when daily life is lived
in another culture; another language.

One
of the joys of expat life is to be parachuted in to a new home, with strange
appliances whose instruction manuals (if present) are in a language completely
alien to you. Inevitably you will need
to use them before your internet is set up to allow you to search for a version
you can understand. Even something as
simple as a stop-cock for mains water can be hard to find if you do not know where to look. Most British expats would expect it to be
under the kitchen sink, many other people would automatically look in the
basement or utility. Ours is on the
landing just outside the front door – not the most obvious place. One of the first things I do is locate this
valve and the circuit panel so that I do not have to hunt for them in an
emergency while trying to communicate with a plumber or electrician with whom I
share no common fluent language.

Landlords
also often forget to explain conventions of the host country that everyone
grows up knowing because it is done as a matter of course. It simply does not occur to people that
expats might not know that they need to do something. Our first winter here in Astana our pipes
froze, our neighbour very kindly thawed them out for us and explained that because,
our building is poorly insulated we have to keep a tap running when the
temperature falls below -30. It never
occurred to us that we would need to take special care as we are in a large
apartment building (although we would have asked had we been renting a house or
were in the countryside) and so we did not ask the landlord if it was necessary,
a local probably would have.

It
helps to be prepared for bizarre surprises, in Nigeria we called for someone to come
and help clear and service our blocked air conditioner. We assumed that the service engineer would
bring a vacuum device, we did not realise what form this took and were surprised
to see him suck the blockage clear with his mouth. We felt rather bad as we could have performed
that rather unpleasant task for ourselves.

We
were reminded of the penchant for expat embarrassment when we noticed a slow
puncture this week. We drove to the
petrol station and looked about for an air pump to keep us going long enough to have the time to change the tyre. In Europe every station has air and water
available, usually for free. The
attendant came up to ask why we were exploring (poking about) and looked rather
surprised when we asked where the air was; they did not have any - we had to go
to a specialist shop. We called a friend
to ask where she checked her tyre pressure and she explained that this is not a
self service service and is not available at all stations. She directed us to a supplier near her home;
we were not hopeful as it was about 10pm at this stage but she said they worked
late. The man came out, took one look
and removed the wheel for us to give it a thorough inspection. It turned out we had picked up a nail and he
patched and replaced the tyre in a matter of moments. Far less time than it would have taken us to
jack up the car on our emergency kit and swap over to the spare.

Because there is little time to get to know their idiosyncrasies hire cars have a
wealth of embarrassment potential. Most
people will know how awful it is to pull up to the petrol station only to remember that the hire company forgot
to tell you whether the car takes petrol or diesel, you forgot to check which side
the tank is on and you have no idea where the tank release is. The first (and thankfully only) time I ever
had to drive an automatic car I thought that I had to put the thing in park and
move through neutral, D1 and D2 at every stop or traffic light. I spent the whole time wondering why anyone
would ever want to drive such an invention of the devil instead of a simple
manual car. People who drive
automatics assume that those who drive manuals understand the differences but while
my driving instructor taught me how to drive a manual and how to handle a 4x4, he
never touched on an automatic. My
mother, laughed for a solid 10 minutes when I complained to her when home at
last.

The
worst of it all is that we are pretty competent and reasonably practical. I know we are not the only people to ever feel
like fools in situations like this, a sense
of humour certainly helps and at least I know that, if nothing else I have
learned how to keep an AC running. It is
easy to laugh about stupid situations after the event but they are resolved so
much more easily if you can laugh at the time, much more constructive than
standing on pride.

4 comments:

Situations in which local people know the score when you do not: Ghana, West Africa:I was delighted to find our security guards feeding a street cat and her kittens after they appeared one day in our garden. This went on for several weeks, with myself also feeding the felines, who became plump and healthy. Little had I realised that we were, in fact, jointly feeding them up for a stew pot.

Poor kitties! But at least the guards were happy. We had a similar incident in Nigeria where we tried to prevent the builders working on our extension cooking and eating a giant bush rabbit (the biggest rat I have ever seen). We called the doctor to convince them it was a bad idea only to have him declare that bush rabbit was very tasty and very good for you. I still remember how thick and scaly the tail was. Ugh.

Hi! Fun to read your blog:-) It is great! We are Greek-Norwegian expats now living in India:-) I saw you also lived in my home country Norway - and so many more - some adjustments I guess?! All the best

I grew up in Stavanger/Sandness, I spent 6 years there as a young child. I remember the very beautiful scenery with great fondness. Each country is a joy to live in in its own way, India must be fascinating, very different from both Greece and Norway.

About Me

I am a no longer 30 something global soul, a perpetual expat. I was born in the Netherlands to a Dutch/Irish Family. Since then I have lived in Norway, Nigeria, Turkey and Venezuela. I went to school and university in the UK. We decided to have an adventure and took our children and the dog(s) to live abroad, first to Kazakhstan and then to various locations in Malaysia. Our current home is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
This blog is about how we muddle through daily life as expats and how things have changed from the adventures of my childhood.